Plant Peace Daily

Friday, August 28, 2015

I haven’t been inspired to
write lately.Doesn’t really make sense
when writing is one of my joys.But, one
of the earth’s tiny creatures inspired me today when I was doing the
dishes.There was a spider hiding behind
our dish sponge.When I picked up the
sponge, he ran under an upside down bowl and hid.He was peeking out from under the bowl and I
saw he was too frightened to come out while I was staring at him.I moved back and he came out from under the
bowl looking around to make sure the giant threat (me) wasn’t there.I came back to the sink a little later
thinking he was gone.I started the
dishes again and he ran out from under the dish drainer.It was unmistakable that what he was feeling
was fear.I am not anthropomorphizing
here.When a living being runs away from
a threat, it is a desire to live and a fear of being hurt that motivates
them.

During the spider incident, I
felt how strong my desire was to not cause fear in another being.When we are working as a voice for other
living beings we often try to get people to examine the suffering their actions
may be supporting.Those wanting to
discount the suffering of other beings often argue that we don’t really know if
these beings are suffering or we are told that they were treated “humanely”
before their “one bad day”.

If I did a random sampling
and asked people, “Would you want to cause fear in someone else?”Most reasonable humans would answer
“No”.If I asked if they would be
willing to cause fear in someone else if they were different physically or
culturally, again a reasonably kind human would answer “No”.

But, everyday, otherwise
caring humans around the globe are directly or indirectly causing fear in other
individuals because they are different physically and/or culturally.

In a recently released film
called Unity there is footage from
France of two steers (?) in a concrete chute about to be slaughtered.You don’t see the actual slaughter in this
footage.What you see is one of them
being forced to move forward and a sliding metal door separating the one
waiting from the one being killed.The
one waiting knows what’s coming and begins panicking and trying to escape. The fear in his actions and his eyes is
unmistakable.He tries to pull his
enormous body over the top of the concrete chute.Everyone I have talked to who saw this film
with all of its graphic and violent footage says that the scene with the
frightened steer is the most difficult and heartbreaking.Why?Could it be because they can feel the fear in that animal and relate to
feeling absolutely terror and helplessness? When I first saw this footage I
felt like I was inside that terrified being and I was sick with fear and
sadness.

Last week I visited my old
stomping grounds in Maine.I was
surprised and saddened to learn that many of the folks who were once ethical vegans
are now eating meat.When asked why they
went back to eating meat and other animal products, their answer is about
wanting to eat locally.I know some of
these ex-vegans.These are caring people who try to do the right thing.A few of them have worked in animal rights
and education work.Some ran
sanctuaries.Somehow the justification
of “eating locally” has over-ridden their knowledge of the issues and their
compassionate choices.

What I know about these folks
is that if I asked them if they would knowingly cause fear in someone else,
they would say “no”.I also know that
they, like many people who use the “eating locally” reasoning, will eat meat
and other animal products that are not actually locally sourced.Once they open that door to supporting animal
agriculture, I am guessing that they stop questioning the reality of what they
are doing.

I can guarantee that each of
these ex-vegans would never do anything to knowingly cause fear in another
human, a dog, a cat, a monkey or any being whom they do not think of as
“food”.If they saw a cowering dog being
threatened by a human, they would step in to help that dog.But the same fear in a being who will be
their meal and they choose not to intervene.And, in fact, they choose to slaughter that being or pay someone else to
slaughter that being.

So, how do we re-connect
people with their most compassionate empathetic selves?These are not people who are unaware of the
realities.They have turned their backs
on the realities and on the fear and violence they are now supporting.I don’t know the answer.I want to be able to sit with them and ask
them if they would knowingly cause fear in someone else’s life.

No matter the size of that
someone…from the smallest insect to the largest mammal….we all want to live and
we all feel fear in the face of a threat.

I know that there is no way
to open up someone else’s heart.Mostly,
what I want, is to understand what makes someone’s perceptions change to the
point of turning away from a choice that was once at their core. Thinking back
on my visit to Maine last week, I wish I had visited with some of the ex-vegans
there.I wish I had some slow mindful
time with them to ask questions and to understand more of their process and
path.My next visit, I will do
that.In the mean time, if you know of
someone who was once practicing ethical veganism and is now eating animal
products, can you inquire for me?Can
you send me their response?Please do
this in a non-judgmental way.

For every being, large and
small, I want to thank you for helping me gain some insight into this.And to that kitchen sink spider, thank you
for starting my thought process around fear.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

If you haven’t seen the
magazine: Modern Farmer, you have missed out on seeing bright cheeked
thirty-somethings…who care WHERE their food comes FROM, but, apparently, do not
care about WHO their food IS.

Modern Farmer magazine has
been around about a year.Here is how
the editor describes their target audience:“You are thoughtful and conscientious about what you consume, you are looking for the story behind what you eat and drink, you are willing
to pay more for organic food, humanely raised meat and locally made products.”

(I added the italics for
every what that should have been a who.)

You know this
demographic.They want their locally
brewed beer, locally raised meat, dairy and eggs, and they compost and
garden.We have such a large
population of these folks here in Santa Fe, that a new enormous butcher shop
and cafe has popped up next to our food co-op.

You can probably find Issue
4/Spring 2014 of Modern Farmer at your local natural foods store.The cover stories include: Is Milk Humane?And, The
Next Pig Thing.There is a photo of
a pig’s face on the cover. Please don’t buy the magazine.

The article The Next Pig Thing has 7 beautiful
photos of adorable pigs taken in a studio. The article is divided into 2 categories, just
like the author’s heart and mind are divided:PETS is the first category and FOOD is the second.Here is an excerpt from that article:

“You can feel better about eating bacon from a pig who
had the best possible life and death, and second, lovingly farmed pigs provide
some of the sweetest companionship in the world.”

I could not have made this
up.That is exactly what is written in
the article.

One pig farmer was quoted as
saying, “They can wreck 200 acres
overnight, but they are gregarious, chatty, smart, a joy.”

And, the article goes on to
say “Pigs raised for bacon are usually slaughtered at around 6 months old, if
you can bear it.If you are planning to
raise pigs for bacon, be ready for the messy business of slaughter.If you are wanting to sell your meat, or are
feeling squeamish, find a USDA-certified slaughterhouse near you.”

The article on the dairy
industry is mostly a promotion of “local, organic, sustainable and artisan
dairy products.”There is no mention, of course, of the fact
that we do not need to consume milk as adults and we certainly should not be
consuming the milk of another species.There is recognition in the article that no matter how small and
supposedly conscious the dairy farm is,it is not economically feasible to meet the psychological needs of the
cows.From the article, “the economic reality is that if a calf was
free to suckle on her mother for a few months, as nature intended, the cow
could well be happier and the calf healthier, but most farmers would lose what
little profit there was from their farms. “

One farmer in the article
lets his cows stay with their calves for months.The author of the article doubts that this is
economically sustainable and writes the following: “ In between the extreme of Gibson’s animal-centered dairy and larger
high-volume organics, Ronnybrook is a farm that has found a healthy
compromise.”

The owner of Ronnybrook farm
says, “Cows are like dogs, if you are nice to them, they are nice to you.”

Not once in this 7-page
article does anyone mention the fate of the male calves.By choosing adorable pictures of pigs, cows,
sheep and chickens, this magazine perpetuates the myth of the happy farm
animal. The disconnect is obvious and the happy guilt-free consumers are all
too willing to ignore the truth:Any
animal who is used as a commodity in animal agriculture has their most
important needs ignored if those interfere with profit.

We love to romanticize the relationship between a farmer and "their" animals. We love to think that the meal we just ate supported nothing but blissful times on the farm. The popular book Pigs and Papa is a photo journey into the life of Toshiteru Yamaji and the 1200 pigs he loves. Japanese pig farmer Toshiteru does apparently care deeply about the pigs...but that doesn't stop him from sending them off to slaughter at a young age. I am glad he is not my papa.

The photos of animals in
Modern Farmer Magazine and in Toshiteru Yamaji's book

are some of the most intimate and beautiful I have ever
seen.This makes it all the more
disturbing.The bottom line is
this:Look in their eyes, love them,
treat them as well as you can without cutting into your profits, and then kill them in
their prime.

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Many people who no longer consume dairy products from cows,
still consume dairy from sheep or goat’s milk.Many assume this is a more humane process because they also assume that
it is more small-scale and humane.They
picture pastoral scenes of happy sheep grazing on green hills under the
sun.

I am in the Middle East.The area where I am staying is famous for it’s sheep’s milk and sheep’s
milk yogurt.I was taking a walk today
and saw the same event I see each day.Young boys with sticks guiding the sheep from rocky pasture to rocky
pasture.They whip the sticks at the
sheep to get them to stay together in a flock.

Today, I witnessed a mother sheep who had only moments
earlier given birth while they were moving along next to me.Blood was still coming out of her and her
back legs were soaked with blood.A
little boy was ordered to take the little lamb, who could not even stand up
yet.He picked up the lamb and started
toward home, dropping the lamb many times along the way.While this was going on, the mother was
trying to leave the flock and get to her baby.She cried loudly and the baby cried for her, but the boys whipped her to
keep her from leaving the flock.Her
udders were tightly swollen with dripping milk.While forced to join the flock, she never took her eyes off the lamb,
until the boy and lamb were out of sight.She cried constantly.A man on
the small dirt road translated and told me that the shepherd boys said she
would be with her lamb in an hour when they finished grazing and returned to
the farm.I wasn’t comforted by
this.I wanted to be relieved, but I
wasn’t.That hour would be a long hour
for a mother separated from her new born and for this tiny lamb just born,
looking for comfort.

Later in the day, I was walking and saw the mother
again.She was separated from the lamb
by two fenced areas.All night I could
hear the mother crying for the baby and the baby crying for the mother.Their voices got weaker and weaker.By 5 am the baby’s voice sounded like a
whisper and the mother’s pain was not only in her voice, but in my heart.

There are times I wonder why I come here.I ask myself what the point is.Why travel to a place and plant seeds of
compassion in a society that embraces violence as a righteous part of its
heritage?My answer to myself is that while I am on
earth, I will make every effort to not turn away from an open door.If there is a door, wide open in front of me, inviting me in and beyond
that door is some form of suffering asking to be addresses, why would I not
walk thru that door?

Yesterday, the security cameras on the streets of East
Jerusalem filmed a group of very young boys dragging a medium sized white dog
on a rope and beating the her with sticks as they dragged and kicked her.She tried to hide under a car and they dragged
her out and continued to beat her.An
older boy appeared and grabbed the rope and swung it and the dog was flung over
a concrete wall.The rest of the saga
for this dog was not caught on camera.Eyewitnesses reported that the severely wounded dog crawled to a
concrete pipe and hid inside.Then the
boys stuff material in the end of the pipe and set the pipe on fire to kill the
dog.Adults and families walked by and
did nothing.The door was open and they
chose to look the other way.These doors
open around us all the time.What we
witness in our days is presented to us as an opportunity.How we respond is our work while on the
planet.

We are not powerless to make a difference in the world
unless we choose to be powerless.We are
all leaders when we choose to be.There
is no reason to walk by that open door.Turn and face it and walk right in.You have nothing to lose and potentially a full meaningful life to gain.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

I have been "warming up" to our solar cooker. We have had it for years and I just never got friendly with it. Then, this week, with every day in the 90's and 100's, it was time to develop a relationship with that thing. Now I am completely in love!
We have made lentils, brown basmati rice, yukon gold potatoes, sweet potatoes, and more.....today: organic beets that became the food of the gods with very little time in the sun cooker! Why have I waited this long to get the solar cooking bug?
We are moving toward eating more and more raw foods....which were made by the sun in their own way. But, when we get a hankering for something cooked, nothing is better than sun cooking!

I am not really big on celebrating holidays. The word HOLIDAY comes
from holy day. One of the most sacred holidays for me is Earth Day.
The only change I would make to the date of the celebration is to make
it 365 days of the year. I also love Mother’s Day, but for me it is
also every day of the year and it focuses on non-human and human mothers
who routinely have their young taken away. This callous separation of
close-knit families is always done for greed/profit. Whether it is a
human child sold as a slave to pay a family debt, a calf torn away from
his or her mother so that humans can steal her milk, a young elephant
stolen so he or she can be trained to do unnatural acts for human
entertainment, an adult chimp killed and her baby stolen for invasive
experimentation and a life of imprisonment or a puppy sold by a puppy
mill while still at an age where he should be with his mother….all cause
intense emotional pain for both mother and child.

.

Most holidays have completely lost their meaning. Very few people
know that most holidays mean more than an extra day or two off work. We
are trained from early on in our lives that it is OK to have major
inconsistencies in what we say we care about and how we actually choose
to live our lives. When the Be Kind To Animals Week banner is stretched
across the same wall at the school where the hamburgers are listed on
the school lunch menu or we hear “peace on earth” repeatedly for a
holiday that consists of buying a bunch of stuff and eating animals, we
learn that holidays are not about their original intention.

.

I
tabled at three large events for Earth Day week. Our table had
outreach material for compassionate environmentally responsible and
healthy food choices. We were the vegan table. Two of the events
included people selling or displaying baby goats, piglets and young
chicks. The food sold at these two events was 95% animal products. The
smell of grilling flesh permeated the air for both full days. One
person came up to our booth and said, “You may have the only booth that
is appropriate for Earthday.” I actually found a few other booths that
sold appropriate items like organic local seedlings and solar cookers
and some trying to preserve wild lands and care for animals. But, for
the most part, the events were just parties and most people attending
were not giving earth-friendly choices much attention.

My third tabling was at a local college. Most people zoomed by the
table not wanting to know about anything that may change their consumer
habits. One man was wearing a t-shirt that had the word PRIVILEGE with
the red cross-out over it. He was telling his friend that he would
never even consider being vegetarian. I piped in that he may not want
to wear that shirt while saying that. He was very quiet from that point
on.

..

An older woman came by the table and quietly watched the Farm to
Fridge film I had running continuously throughout the day. This
incredible Mercy for Animals compilation includes a look at the violent
realities of food animal industries. This woman said to me, “We would
never do it this way. This is terrible. We do it the traditional way,
the kind way.” I asked her what the kind way was. “We just shoot them
in the head,” she responded proudly. Then she continued, “They send the
women into the house and then shoot them in the head. It is very
quick.” I asked her, “If it is a kind way, why do they send the women
into the house?” She got a distant look and then just kept repeating,
“This is awful, we do it the kind way….this is awful, we do it the kind
way.” I told her that in my family we decided that the kind way was to
not unnecessarily kill any living being. She grabbed a little literature
and then wandered off, still saying “We do it the kind way, we do it
the kind way.”

.

I would love to see Earth Day not only celebrated everyday, but to
see it celebrated with some actual mindfulness about how our personal
choices affect the earth and all her inhabitants. We can all work to
make our local Earth Day celebrations retain some of the integrity they
were meant to have. Go ahead and get your face painted, dance to some
good music, celebrate with friends, and make sure that every booth,
product and message is consistent with caring for the Earth.

.

.

Tabling is not my favorite form of outreach, but on my most sacred
of holidays, Earth Day, I am more than willing to give my time and
energy to at least trying to preserve a little bit of the original
intention of the day and be a voice for the voiceless.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

The local food movement folks often think they have a very
different philosophy from the compassionate vegan folks. The reality is that our intentions are
very much the same. We want to do
the right thing.

The problem is that everyone I know who claims to just eat
locally, doesn’t. They often buy
non-local products and eat out at restaurants that use non-local
ingredients. I have also found
that most of the people who are trying so hard to eat locally, haven’t done
their homework about the real affects of their choices.

When judging the carbon footprint of a particular food, it
is important to take into account the water and energy required to produce the
product, not just the transportation of the item. It turns out that transportation is a very small part of the
ecological impact of our food. A
study in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology found that
switching just two meals a week from meat and dairy products to vegan choices
reduces more greenhouse gasses than buying all local food.

The local food trend is very popular in the USA. As a part of this local food movement,
many people are buying chickens and goats and plopping them in their backyards
to produce their own meat, eggs and dairy. Most of the people doing this do not have a clue how to
really meet all the needs of the animals they are raising. Craigslist here is full of listings
from people who did not know what they were getting into and now have animals
they will give away free to anyone.

I recently led a compassionate living program at a week-long
camp for teens. I arrived at the
camp just as the program before mine was in full swing. A local woman who has goats in her yard
was letting the campers milk her four goats. I sat in on the session. Many of
the campers would not taste the milk because they saw the source and it grossed
them out. I asked them if they
would drink it if it was in the store in a plastic jug. They all said they probably would. The goat woman was talking about
her spiritual connection with the goats. I asked her if she keeps the goats
pregnant so they will keep producing milk. I wanted the campers to have the
full story of the reality of dairy.
When she shared that she does keep them pregnant, I asked her what
happens if a male kid is born? She
said, “We send them off. We cannot keep them around because they have a strong
smell and it affects the milk.”
When I asked her where she sends them off to, she slid away from the
question. The director of the camp
was also in the session. He said,
“Well, it is all part of the cycle of life, isn’t it? They are learning about the cycle of life..” “Yes,” I replied, “they are learning
about the cycle of life and the cycle of unnecessary premature death.”

Possibly the best part of the local food movement is that
people have a bit more of a connection to where their food comes from. The worst part is that, when animals
are involved, the glossy wholesome image that goes along with it covers up what
it really means for the individual animals and the environment. Mothers and babies torn apart so we can
steal their milk, males sent to slaughter and mothers who are no longer
producing large quantities of milk also sent to slaughter, buying baby chicks
shipped from hatcheries who kill off the males in often barbaric ways, chickens
kept in small boxes in backyards (common in our community), non-local feed
often fed to the animals on farms marketing products as “local”, trucking and
non-local slaughter of many of the animals whose flesh is sold as “local”, and
the use of large quantities of water for each animal (in many areas, water is a
very scarce commodity).

The cost of buying chicks at a hatchery or feed store that gets them from a hatchery-dead and dying male chicks in dumpster behind hatchery.

I know that death is part of life. I also know that we can make choices that support our own
health, the environment and all beings and thrive on compassionate vegan
choices. We cannot live a life
that does no harm, but we can make choices that cause the least harm.

I am all for eating locally and growing our own food
whenever possible. Imagine the
double positive of choosing local and plant-based foods! So, when you are looking at what to do
with that backyard of yours, plant fruits and veggies. Health, compassion and
environmental responsibility can all be part of your local food plan!

Thursday, January 12, 2012

I just found out that I can continue to post the blogs I write for Happy Cow here .....after they have been on Happy Cow for a bit. So they will start popping up here again. Coming Next: The Sacred Heart of T. Colin Campbell or Campbell Saves....Repent. Stay tuned for that one.....

About Me

I live with JC Corcoran, and our beautiful goofy rescue dogs,Bean and Bapu. We live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We are busy veganizing Santa Fe and the world. I live to hike, bike, swim, rescue animals, and love being a voice for those species that human society has not learned to connect to and learn from.
To see more about us and our work, visit www.plantpeacedaily.org.
(Rae is the family blogster)